"Eye" remake lacks quiet power of original

By Frank Scheck

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Considering that it ranks as one of the best of the J-horror films, it's surprising that it took this long for an American remake of the Pang brothers' 2002 "The Eye."

Less surprising is that this version, directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud ("Them") sacrifices the quietly creepy qualities of the original in favor of ramped-up horror film techniques that by now seem distressingly familiar.

Starring Jessica Alba as a blind girl who gains both her sight and the ability to see dead people, the film opened Friday without being screened for the press.

Sebastian Gutierrez's screenplay hews fairly closely to the original in its story about Sydney Wells (Alba), a concert violinist blind since childhood who regains her vision thanks to a double cornea transplant. ("Stem cell research changed the game," a therapist informs her, in a not too subtly political piece of dialogue.)

Unfortunately, Sydney's newfound ability to see comes with a price. When the bandages are removed after the operation (revealing a surprising lack of swelling), she soon finds herself afflicted with horrific visions, involving both fiery disasters and a succession of vaguely menacing figures who are no longer alive. Needless to say, this results in a lot of embarrassing situations in which she sees things that are invisible to the other people in her life, including her sister (a wasted Parker Posey), her orchestra leader (a similarly wasted Rade Serbedzija) and her vision therapist (Alessandro Nivola).

Sydney eventually figures out that the problem stems from her eyes' donor, a young Mexican woman. Traveling with her therapist across the border, the pair discover that the woman had similar visions, particularly one relating to a devastating fire. It all winds up, in typical American horror film fashion, with a spectacular finale involving an explosive highway accident.

The filmmakers do an effective job of conveying the main character's visual disorientation before getting to the main business at hand. But though some of the sequences are impressively spooky -- like the one in which Sydney encounters a startled woman who has just been killed in an accident -- their effectiveness is marred by such overkill as the shrieking ghouls who escort the ghosts.

Naturally, the visions also are accompanied by deafeningly loud noises (why Sydney hears as well as sees them is a mystery), though in this film's universe, even the sound of a cappuccino maker is fraught with peril.

Cast:

Sydney Wells: Jessica Alba

Dr. Paul Faulkner: Alessandro Nivola

Helen Wells: Parker Posey

Simon McCullough: Rade Serbedzija

Directors: David Moreau, Xavier Palud; Screenwriter: Sebastian Gutierrez; Producers: Paula Wagner, Don Granger, Michelle Manning; Executive producers: Mike Elliott, Peter Chan, Roy Lee, Doug Davison, Michael Paseornek, Peter Block, Tom Ortenberg, Darren Miller; Director of photography: Jeffrey Jur; Production designer: James Spencer; Music: Marco Beltrami; Costume designer: Michael Dennison; Editor: Patrick Lussier.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter